I've never seen Coronation Street, but planning to watch it. Is Coronation Street produced in the 21st century somehow related to those series made in the 60s - 90s? Is it necessary to watch the older series to understand the newer series?
Edit: Title changed due to comment below.
Coronation Street aka Corrie has been running continuously since 1960.
You will never catch up from the start, there are nearly 10,000 episodes to catch up on ;)
It's a soap, join in now & eventually you'll pick it up.
If you can get ITV3 where you live, they are running 10 classic episodes a week, starting from the late 80's [so at least in colour, though in 4:3 aspect.]
Yes it is the same series and that been running since the 60's.
However soap opera's have changing characters and story lines constantly. Each story line will be it's own self contained arch, anything you need to know to understand the story line will be spelled out to the viewer even if old characters and backstory that happened years ago is used.
So I suggest you just start now, and you will be at the end of some story lines, the middle of others and perhaps the start of another. After watching for a few weeks, all of the current story lines will have ended and you will understand everything that is currently happening.
As a side note, large story lines tend to come to a culmination at holidays, for example Christmas episodes are nearly always the end of one of the largest story lines of the year.
The story plots always change, characters come and go. After a few weeks of watching you will basically know everyone on the street and their story.
